Legacy
by Kerowyn6
Summary: Julia is annoyed with her life. She hates being a legacy; she wants fame and attention like her hero. She wants to be more than Terminus' little helper. SO she runs away. But life out in the wild is tricky, and soon she finds herself making choices she never thought she'd make... and becoming her own hero.


The silvery light streamed down through the gaps in the trees, turning everything to platinum. Frost-encased shrubs glittered. Snow banks shimmered like so many iridescent stars.

Through the winter forest came a wolf. It, like everything else in the winter wonderland, glimmered. But it was not the glimmer of a beautiful winter day. It was the wolf's own glimmer.

The creature trotted along the path through the frozen forest, nose to the ground, ignoring the herd of deer that started, stared a moment, and bounded off through the trees, ignoring the small rabbit snuffling at the base of a pine.

Finally it halted, glanced around, and sent up a long, mournful howl. A moment passed, and soon there was a choir of canine voices ringing around the valley. The bright morning light seemed to dim. This was a remembrance, not the standard message of "This is my bush and no one else is allowed to do their business on it". One of their fellows had died here.

This was a funeral.

And suddenly, the voices stopped. The sun returned. And the wolf was nowhere to be seen.

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"Julia…?" came the cry, "I need you! Where have you gotten to?"

Julia, who was at the moment hidden behind a large pillar, sighed. She almost called out, but decided that Terminus could jolly well find someone else to be his arms. She was _ten_, for goodness sake. She had far more important things to be doing than pointing for a cranky old god. She was rather proud of her age. She had been alive for ten whole years. A few more and she'd be old enough to run off.

That was Julia's grand plan: when she was thirteen, she would run off to… well, to be honest her plan hadn't progressed past that. Her parents, whenever she brought up the subject, just shared glances that said _she'll grow out of it_. This was not the reaction she wanted. She wanted them to help her plan her escape.

Many children in Julia's situation would not have understood why Julia had told her parents that she was going to leave them. They would have remarked that most parents would try to stop their child from running away. But Julia had no intention of leaving her parents to fret and worry. That would be cruel. Her parents were nice. They didn't deserve that.

Perhaps it would explain a bit more about Julia if her reason for running away were made clear: she was the daughter of a legacy of Terminus and a very, very distant legacy of Jupiter. Her great-times-fifty-three grandmother or grandfather had probably enjoyed great celebrity in New Rome. Not Julia, who, although she wasn't afraid of heights, definitely could not fly or control weather. She had tried. She daydreamed about it being discovered that in fact she was a direct daughter of Jupiter, but although she still entertained herself with this fancy, she knew it would not come true.

Her hero hadn't had the disadvantage of being 'the little girl who helps Terminus'. It was certainly a disadvantage, as no one took her seriously. So she had, at the age of eight, decided that in five years' time she would run off and prove her worth. She wasn't sure how she would do this, but she knew she would come back in laurels, and everyone would cheer her name. That would show them, she thought.

"Julia?" called Terminus, "Come here, would you? I need you to show Bobby where our stash of tooth-brushes is."

Shaking her head in what she thought was a put-upon matter, she got up and retrieved the extra dental supplies.

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The night was crisp and clear, and the wolves were still searching. They had found one body, but the other was missing. Lupa sat on a snowy crest, regarding her subjects thoughtfully. The wind was whispering through the trees and combing through her fur, but she didn't mind. She had much more important things to worry about. The end of wolf-kind, for starters.

The two bodies they were trying to locate had given their souls for the good of the pack. Wolves were generally sensible creatures who would never sacrifice themselves for other wolves, but this had been a special case.

But the worst part of it all was still weighing on Lupa's mind like an overgrown vulture, sweeping down to prey on her conscience every time her thoughts weren't otherwise occupied. The pack's loss filled her with sadness, for the two wolves who had been lost had been two of her best and brightest, young pups, really, with a long life full of adventure and joy ahead of them. But her conscience hurt her even more; anguish, sharp as a knife, stung her.

The worst part wasn't the death of her two followers.

It wasn't even that they knew with a certainty that they were going to die.

No, the worst part was that Lupa herself had ordered it.


End file.
